IPv6 Launch On June 6, 2012 By Internet Society. Adios IPv4!

Today Google Official Google Blog: IPv6: countdown to launch that they are joining the Internet Society to launch IPv6 globally on June 6, 2012. The uninitiated should go through our #-Link-Snipped-# #-Link-Snipped-# of #-Link-Snipped-# and get the basics right before reading the rest of this article. The IPv6 stands for the version 6 of the Internet Protocol (or in simpler words, the language machines use to communicate on the Internet). The #-Link-Snipped-# was celebrated last year on June 8. June 6 will now mark the global launch of the latest protocol. Several major Internet companies including Google and Facebook had joined the World IPv6 Day celebration to spread awareness and make the ISPs upgrade their hardware to support the new protocol. Google, through their blog post said that with the global launch of IPv6, they're closing the gap & moving towards the next generation of Internet.


IPv6 Global Launch On June 6, 2012

IPv6 essentially replaces the existing IPv4 which puts a cap on the number of unique addresses on the Internet. IPv6 uses 128 bits to code a unique address on the Internet. A typical IPv6 address would look like: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. IPv4 promised about 4 billion unique addresses and the Internet has fast consumed most of them. But IPv6 upgrades the limit to 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses which we hope will take long time to fill. Engineers are already envisioning the future in which every little electronic device would have its own unique address.

Google will begin offering all their services including search, gmail, maps, YouTube and others through IPv6 starting June 6, 2012. You, the end user, need not worry whether you're IPv6 compliant or not. Your ISP will have to upgrade their hardware and we hope they have taken the right steps by now. If you have doubts, you may visit Ready for the future of the Internet? and find out whether you will have difficulty in accessing the services. In 99% of the cases, there won't be a problem.